“If your actions inspire others to
dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”_ John
Quincy Adams
If we dream
of taking the next generation to greater heights, we need to become good role
models first. And that means we have to become the change we wish to see in the
world.
In shorter
words: we need to lead ourselves right.
These days, leadership
is less about our status; it is more about our choices. It is less about our
power; it is more about our motives; it is less about our position but more
about the quality of our actions.
Leadership
in modern time has to do with influence not authority. Therefore, servant leaders
quietly ask themselves the following questions on a regular basis:
Are we doing
our best to realize our potential so we can serve as a good reference point to
the people?
Are we
driven solely for our personal needs or do we have genuine concerns for need of
others around us?
Does the
overall good of our community have a high place in our heart?
We must answer
those questions—affirmatively—with regards to how we lead our lives each day,
if we want to be an agent of positive change.
In this
connection, below are four great qualities of self-sovereignty we can all
benefit from.
Vision
The first
requirement for good leadership is to know where one is heading. Without
vision, we can get nowhere.
To drive
this point home, Michael Gerber, the author of the popular business book,
‘E-Myth Revisted, asks: "With no clear picture of how you wish your life
to be, how on earth are you going to live it?
Whether we
are leading ourselves or we are leading a group of people, to succeed in life,
we need to have a clear vision of the kind of future we want to make happen.
Commenting
on the importance of vision, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple said:
“If you are
working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be
pushed. The vision pulls you.”
This is why
great leaders are human dynamos; they are fueled by the clarity of their
vision.
Commitment
Commitment
is about giving one’s heart completely to a purpose, a cause or an ideal. Truly
committed leaders are all about getting the job done; they give and accept no
excuses.
Lack of commitment
gives rise to sidestepping or withdrawal when the going gets tough. To deliver
in any capacity, commitment is one thing we can’t afford to not to have.
Wes Fesler, the
late Harvard basketball coach, explained this powerful quality tersely when he
said: “Commitment hangs on when all else has fallen.”
Consistency
Leaders show
up every time. They show up, no matter what, especially when it is easier not
to. Leaders make the right choices consistently.
They show up
in moments of ease and inconvenience because they understand that great vision
cannot be realized without consistency of performance.
And Jim
Tressel, the President of Youngstown State University, Ohio put it this way:
“The
hallmark of excellence, the test of greatness, is consistency.”
True leaders
don’t respond very high today and very low tomorrow. They maintain a balance of
flow. And, since their performance is steady and reliable, anyone can count on
them to move humanity forward.
Follow-through
Eventually,
great leaders win. They find a way to convert their vision into reality. No
matter the sacrifices required, real leaders always manage to find a way to
finish the job they started.
In essence,
great leaders know that great things of life require great sacrifices and they
are always willing to pay their due in advance. They know that in the pursuit
of purpose, half measures won’t do.
So they
decide to go all the way because they understand that the richest reward of
success comes from seeing things through.
Now, the main thing on the science of leadership
lies in the better outcome it can create either for us as individuals or for us
as a nation. This is why Warren Bennis, the author of ‘Visionary Leadership’ plainly
concluded that: “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
To build
that precious capacity, we need not only to talk the talk but more importantly,
we need to walk the talk, everyday of our lives.
